What Happened on Route 404
by Elunore
Summary: "Can I help you?" Dean called out to the man. Damn it, he could hear the slight waver in his voice. The man just stood there, staring at Dean in between glances around the store. What was probably only a few seconds felt like minutes, hours even, to Dean. "I need a job." It almost pained Dean to say, "We're not hiring." Liquor Store AU, Major Character Death, Angst.


Winchester Liquors was located right off Route 404, on the outskirts of just another hick town on the road to somewhere better. It was a pretty nice place, just a bit (or quite a bit) worn down. It wasn't like they could afford much better with their usual customers being a handful of regulars and the occasional group of rowdy just-turned-twenty-one-year-olds looking for some cheap beer to drink in a field somewhere. The shop had been in the family for generations (well, two was still a plural,) with a sagging, wooden shingle'd roof and pale grey (it used to be white) siding, windows plastered with ads and prices, and its current owner was none other than Dean Winchester.

Dean was a smooth talking 'country' boy with a bad case of bowed legs, a hint of a drawl, and eyes that were enough to melt any city girl into putty, more than malleable enough to land her right into his bed. And, oh, how consistently it happened, Dean would spend a few nights a week clubbing in one of the nearby cities, bringing a girl (or two or three) back to the small house he owned for a night filled with alcoholic haze followed by a morning full of shame, yet tinged with satisfaction.

The way the Winchester property was set up was the shop right off the highway with a parking lot out front. Leaving through the back door would take you into a big yard (more like an acre of useless grass that was only a pain in the ass to mow) with three buildings: the main house, the guest house, and the garage.

The main house was where Dean had lived as a kid, with Dad and Sammy, complete with small, narrow, and whitewashed hallways and big, echoing rooms. Then when Dean got old enough to use his charms effectively, both his father and his brother had decided they were sick of seeing the endless parade of girls clutching their clothes to their chest, stuttering out apologies as they left, swearing up and down that they thought Dean (Dave? Derek?) lived alone, followed by a smug, pleased looking (although remarkably less clothed) Dean shutting the door behind them, they gave Dean the guest house to call his own.

To be honest though, Dean liked the guest house better, it was smaller, a few years newer, and he didn't feel like he was one tiny person, alone, bouncing through the rooms without a purpose like he did in the main house. The guest house had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and what house was complete without a breakfast nook.

The garage itself was nothing special, just a big building with more than enough room to store five cars but only held one. Dean's pride and joy, a '67 Chevy Impala. Man, how Dean cherished that thing. There were many nights where Dean would just sit out there with a beer in hand, tuning her or polishing her spotless black paint job.

For a while the main house had stood empty, Sam had gone off to college on a scholarship and Dad had hung around for a few months but had ultimately left on some self-righteous quest for betterment, and Dean hadn't wanted to move back in there alone. And so he'd stayed in the guest house and worked alone.

Then, as usual, the Winchesters had bad luck. Sam's girlfriend, Jess, had died in a horrible fire, bad enough to destroy the entire apartment complex and badly singe the buildings surrounding it. Dean had flown into Connecticut for the funeral then returned back home with Sam in tow. Sam'd decided to take a break from higher education to mourn, and once again, the main house wasn't empty. Dean wasn't alone in running the shop anymore. And better yet, he could take a day off from the shop here and there and leave Sammy running it for a few hours.

But, Sam hated it.

Sam hated everything about the store. He hated how he always ended up working there, hated how it supplied Dad with all the alcohol needed, hated how it tied him down to that dusty highway and that hick town. And he'd rebelled since he was small enough to toddle through the messy aisles.

Dean hated it too, but for Dean, Dad's word was law. Dad said, "Work the store." You'd better fucking work the store and do him one better, wash the windows, sweep the floor, take inventory (glossing over all the bottles and cans that went missing thanks to Dad's habits (and then Dean's (and then Sammy's))). Think of what Dad wanted done before he knew it himself. And that's what Dean had been doing since he could toddle through the messy aisles.

Most of the days in the shop were just one continuous blur, stacking boxes, ringing people up (in various states of sobriety), taking inventory, more often than not letting the teens with badly made phony IDs buy beer, stocking shelves. It was broken up by the nights of nameless girls, sure, some of them made return trips to the guest house, and some stayed a few nights instead of one, but Dean always made sure to never get attached. Getting attached to a girl meant the real end to Dean's life, it meant settling down, it meant that he really wasn't in control, that he couldn't pack up and leave the shop whenever he wanted. It would mean that Sammy was right that this place made sure that you couldn't leave, it made sure that it sunk it's claws into you one way or another and that you'd be stuck. It was exactly what Sammy'd tried to avoid by going to college and meeting Jess and getting a degree, but even he ended up back on Route 404, outside that hick town.

It was a day, just like any other with the occasional customer coming through, when again the bell on the shop door chimed. He really should remove it since it pissed him off to no end; it wasn't like the creaking door wouldn't alert him to anyone coming in.

Dean glanced up at the door, straightening his aching back. He'd been dusting under the shelves (who the hell knew how it always got so dirty.)

"Hey?" He called to the man who stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the sun setting through the glass (looking otherworldly). The effect was so he couldn't quite make out the features of the man, he could tell he was tall, taller than Dean, wearing a suit and a trench coat, with a bad case of stubble, even worse than what Dean often sported.

"Can I help you?" Dean called out to the man. Damn it, he could hear the slight waver in his voice.

The man just stood there, staring at Dean in between glances around the store. What was probably only a few seconds felt like minutes, hours even, to Dean. He was used to eyes being on him, but in a much more superficial way, with girls and quite a few guys staring into his too green eyes, moving down to his 'sculpted face', down further to a toned chest hidden under a thin tee shirt, checking out the goods, salivating over bowed legs. But this man's stare was different than others he'd gotten, it was as if he was staring through Dean, acknowledging his appearance of course, but it didn't seem to matter at all.

"I need a job."

That voice was a big surprise; Dean didn't expect the guy's voice to be high pitched, but certainly not this deep. It was deep and gruff and sex put directly into a sound rolled into one smooth package. And it pained Dean to say, "We're not hiring."

"This is the last place I've come to."

The man stepped further into the shop, lessening the glare surrounding him and Dean was finally able to take in his choice in clothes: a rumpled suit and trench coat the hung off his frame. Maybe a released mental patient or escaped psychopath. He gave off an air of being something unearthly, like this sort of interaction was menial and tedious and much too mundane for him.

"Yeah, well, you'll have to keep looking. We're a family business."

The guy still stared at Dean blankly with those big wet eyes as if those words meant nothing. And who the hell knew if they did, they got all kinds passing through the town.

"Listen guy," Dean leaned on the mop, resting his chin on his hands, "This shop only hires family of the owner."

"May I speak with the owner?"

"You're lookin' at him." Dean spread his arms, "And he says we're not hiring."

Dean turned his back to the man and walked towards the back of the shop with the man trailing behind him.

The bell on the door tinkled again, "Dean?"

"Sammy? I'm in the back."

Sam wound his way through the racks and stopped mid-step when he saw Trench Coat, "Sorry, didn't know we had a customer, I'll talk you to you later."

"He was just leaving." Or at least Dean hoped he was. The sooner he was gone, the sooner this foreboding feeling deep in the pit of Dean's stomach would be gone.

"No," Trench coat looked over at Sam, "I need a job and nowhere I've asked will hire me. This is the last store in the town's limits."

Sam looked taken aback, "Uh," he glanced from Dean back to Trench Coat, "Have you ever worked in a liquor store before?"

"Sammy? What're you doing, Sammy?" God damn it, leave it to his stupid brother to try and hire some creep straight from the mental asylum.

"Dean, we could use the help, plus how often do people come by asking for work?"

"Too often for me."

"I've never worked in a store before." The man answered.

He shrugged, "We can train you. What's your name?"

"Castiel."

Of course the guy had a freaky name to go along with his stunning personality.

"Well, Castiel, I'm Sam, this is Dean. Where d'you live?" Sammy kept asking questions, he really was serious about this whole thing.

"With the Novak's."

Well, that raised Dean's eyebrows. All Dean knew about the Novak's was just that old crone and her blind and deaf husband wasting away in their mansion. How'd they get this freak shows staying with them?

"Old house on the hill Novaks?"

"Yes, those are them."

"Sam, can I speak to you, _alone_." Dean practically stalked out of the room, if he knew his little brother (and, oh, how he did), Sammy was giving the guy an apologetic glance and then he'd follow Dean into the back room.

"Well, Sam, what're you playing at? You want to hire this, this whack-job who will probably either drink half our stock or murder us in our sleep?" Dean said, leaning against one of the cinderblock walls.

"He's probably a nice guy, Dean; you just don't want any competition when you're trying to blackmail those girls with fake IDs into letting you peek down their shirts for booze."

"What the hell are you even talking about!?"

Sam ran a hand through his hair and gave Dean a knowing glance, "You let the ones with bad IDs off if they let you sweet talk them, I'm not an idiot, Dean."

"That has nothing to do with this and you know it." The accusation didn't really hurt Dean, practically everyone in town knew he was something of a playboy, it wasn't even gossip at this point, there was no point in gossiping about what wasn't a secret, "This has to do with the wacko you want to hire. What do you think Dad'll say about him when he comes back?"

"Dean…"

"Don't you 'Dean' me."

"Dad hasn't been home for months; hell, we'd think he was dead if it weren't for those postcards."

Dean opened his mouth, ready to crack some smart ass response, maybe something about how Sam had given them even less when he'd gone off to Stanford, but he couldn't. It was too horribly true. They got postcards about once a month from Dad, from such unconnected places it was impossible to figure out what he was doing and where he was going. The first was from Alaska, then the next month another from Maryland, then Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire. On and on the list went and every time they got a new one, Dean made sure to tack it on the wall behind the register, he didn't know why but it just seemed right to have his father's mementos in the shop, it the closest Dean could get to have his father running the shop again.

"We'll give the guy a chance. He can't be that bad, right?"

And so Dean followed Sam back into the shop without another word.


End file.
